Rungore is a game that wears its personality and charm front and centre. Clippy is the psychotic, murderous narrator who is desperate for you to kill everyone and everything. It will stop at nothing to guide you down that path and if you try to do anything about it, Rungore will crash itself on purpose. Welcome to the sadistic world of Clippy and Rungore’s hellbent way of making you fight as aggressively and quickly as possible.
Firstly, Rungore is an odd mix of genres. Your character fights like an idle fighter down various corridors of enemies and events but this is almost always the worst way to play. Between encounters, you draw cards from your character’s deck and can use them in real time combat over the top of the idle battle. Your character builds up a deck for each corridor but at the end of each corridor, you lose everything – so you might as well use it up and fight actively not idlely. Despite calling itself a roguelite, the main overarching progression is completing missions to unlock additional weapons, armour and traits to be added into your card mix that can boost your character. Again though, it is for the corridor only and if you complete an area of corridors, you arrive at your next choice empty and starting from scratch again. Progression is unlocking more places and characters rather than building them up to be better. I must admit, this felt very bitty to me and like I wasn’t making very much progress and I’d personally like to see something more global applied to making my characters stronger over time.
The moment-to-moment gameplay is great though. Each enemy has something to consider about them. Sunflowers attack when you play cards so you need to stay idle. Others tap into each character’s deck to do something in response. Some get progressively faster or feisty, or instead apply effects to you such as slowing you down or reducing your damage. When multiple enemies are on screen you can switch to highlight the one you want to attack and often there is a logical order to pick them off. For example, kill the ammo carts so the minigun can’t keep attacking you. You have to be quick with your movements on cards too. Pile them in quickly and consider the order of how you play them as many have multipliers or double their effect when played repeatedly. Again though, that bitty way of playing then resets your progress after each corridor as your cards are handed back at the end of each corridor.
I very much enjoyed playing Rungore despite my reservations over the bitty progression. Graphically the style is heavy pixelation but it works with the grim and grizzly dungeon corridors you run through. I must give huge credit for how each character has its own unique deck of cards and they all play differently. They often subvert expectations too. Hungry Guy has his attack speed tied to his health so he gets slower as he gets damaged for example. Each character requires a totally different mindset and with 7 available on launch and 15 expected in the full version, this bodes exceptionally well for replayability and variability for the future.
Quirky, cheeky and extremely fast-paced, Rungore leads with its personality but backs it up with quickfire card gameplay. You’ll need to be very skilled and have a bit of luck to win out but there is plenty to enjoy along the way as you try.
Review copy provided by developer. Out on PC. Rungore Beginners Experience is a free demo is a great way to test it out.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
